Melkior shared Maestro’s pain and humiliation. “You’re next”; why had ATMAN said that? She had never even broken it off with this one! There was the proof, in the lovable tête-à-tête after the inglorious bloodshed. Freddie had a dirty, insidious look in his eyes … according to Don Fernando. But Melkior remembered Viviana was “dead” and squelched his pain; there only remained the odor of the snuffed deathbed candle. … If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, should I repent me … Othello had said …
Maestro was still bleeding down the glass; the poor bug squashed against the pane.
“Has he been standing like this long?” he asked the political-explanation man.
“I don’t know — I just got here.”
“And yet you say it’s ‘something political’?”
“That’s what they said … he’d been shouting in there that they were all spies, every last one of them … Well, he might not have been entirely wrong,” continued the man in a whisper, looking out suspiciously into the glittering cafe, “this is where all kinds of city lowlifes hang out.”
Melkior kept an eye out for Don Fernando. His “crowd” was not there in “his” corner, which was instead occupied by two corpulent ladies in expensive fox stoles who were browsing foreign illustrated magazines with café-esque dignity.
Lady spies, joked Melkior … but I wouldn’t put my hand into the fire on it. …
A waiter was drawing the curtain in front of Maestro’s face. The show was clearly over. Maestro, too, seemed to have taken this for the end (as spectator or actor?): he came unglued from the window. He left behind the imprint of a bloody mask on the glass. The audience gave a slight sigh of shock, surprise, possibly pleasure even: serves the drunken scum right — a good bashing’s the best medicine! The “scene” was more engaging than the accession to the Tripartite Pact: they generally kept their newspapers folded on their behinds.
Maestro spitefully turned his bloodied face toward them and growled sangrrre! like a hardened bloodthirsty fiend. … Those in the front row stepped back in fear, moved aside, made way. … An awesome face, blood thirst; nose swollen, mouth bloodied; covered in blood up to the ears. A savage look — the vampire has guzzled his fill of gore.
It’s all from the nose, concluded Melkior with relief. But where can he go now, with his snout all bloody? Of course he was drunk: he was walking like … what the hell, he knows only too well where he’ll end up. He’ll be arrested by the first copper who happens by, thought Melkior. They’re aroused by blood like wild beasts. They’ll run you in even if the blood is your own. Prove it! Where are your wounds? The blood’s from my nose. And you’ll get one on the nose, so there, as counterproof. So what if it’s yours, blood is shed for Kink and countwy, not by brawling in cafés. Get your ass into the Black Maria! And in clambers Maestro …
Where the hell had he got to now? He had slipped out of Melkior’s field of vision. The spectators were dispersing. Boring, really. All the fuss over a bloody nose. A nosebleed, hey!
“Something happened?” ask the latecomers.
“Nothing much. Somebody’s caught one across the snout, spilled a little blood …” The informant even spat at that point, blood from the nose was disgusting, dirty cowardly blood.
“Oh. I’d thought it was …”
“So did I … Well, never mind, there’ll be order imposed here soon enough,” said the informant hopefully.
Melkior was about to ask him … but he was afraid for his own blood. Once order is imposed, no blood will be spilled from the nose. You will be able to show your wounds. You will display your severed head and your hands covered in pure blood, it won’t be from the nose like this, disgusting. The informant will not spit in disappointment. That will be to his taste: pure and plentiful. And instead of those bloodied, the police will be arresting the pale, the bloodless: afraid, eh? And what’re you afraid of, eh? A dissenter, right? … and they’ll spill your blood to show that the thin, fear-diluted blood you have been carrying in your heart with such anxiety is proof of your having been on the opposing side. …
“Don’t hold it against me, Eustachius, that I should be waiting for you in here,” spoke a battered Maestro from a dark doorway. “Don’t look so surprised, don’t lie, Eustachius the Truthful, that you’ve only just discovered me. You were watching me over there already … I saw you, too, but I didn’t want to compromise you.”
“Sure, all right, but what we ought to do now is get some water to …”
“… to bathe our wounds like chastened warriors,” Maestro attempted a joke. “I’m well aware of it, dear Eustachius — all the same, I’d like to wear this mystagogic mask of cannibal religion a little longer. I’m sure it flatters me, aren’t you? I saw myself in the glass, partly, over there, but it must be more impressive in profile-have a look.”
“Leave it for now, Maestro, damn it!” said Melkior angrily. “Your nose is still bleeding. Have you a handkerchief?”
“A handkerchief? You’re asking me the way Othello asked the all-pure Desdemona. Wait, I’m not joking. I have no handkerchief. What do you need one for anyway? This is a trick to put me from my suit.”
“What suit?”
“Oh, that’s a quote, Eustachius … but there is indeed a suit. It’s because of you I fared like this. I’d been looking for you all evening and I ran into …”
“But why did he …”
“How do you know it was a he? Perhaps it was a she? … but with his fore hoof, so it was in fact a he, which puts you in the right. As to the how and why, it’s a long story, Eustachius, and right now I’m not in the mood …”
“All right then, let’s go.”
“Go where, Eustachius? You’re always keen on going somewhere. As if somewhere else was something else. And apart from that, I can’t very well go anywhere before my nose subsides.”
“Oh, I see — it’ll subside right here in the doorway?”
“It won’t, but it’ll have a rest. People keep looking at it: the return of the wounded warrior. …”
“Here’s my handkerchief, staunch the warrior’s bleeding; it’s dripping on you, you’re bloody all over. Right. Now let’s go.”
“Not in this rain, shall we, Eustachius?” Maestro was reluctant about coming out. But he can’t stay here either, not with this “mys-tagogic” mask, thought Melkior.
“It’s not raining very hard. And we have an umbrella.” He did manage to draw him out of the doorway.
They went down the street huddled under the umbrella.
“You know what, faithful Eustachius? … I’m going to bite off his ear, you’ll see,” muttered Maestro into the blood-stained handkerchief. “This blood shall be avenged.”
Planning his revenge like a little boy … but how does he propose to bite his ear off?
“How do you propose to bite his ear off? That’s not easy … not to mention that he simply won’t let you.”
“That’s what I’m figuring out right now …”
Maestro was indeed thinking as he breathed damply, with mucus, through the sodden handkerchief.
“Here’s how: first I’ll pretend I’ve forgiven him, lull his suspicions …”
“Oh, give it a miss,” said Melkior with a kind of disgust.